How Biden Can Get Credit for the Economy
How Biden Can Get Credit for the Economy
Polls not only continue to show Joe Biden trailing Donald Trump slightly, but also that public perception of the economy remains negative.
A national Fox News poll released last week, with Biden trailing by a point in a two-way trial heat, showed only 30 percent of voters think the economy is “excellent” or “good,” with another 31 percent saying “fair” and 39 percent “poor.” Similarly, 30 percent said their family’s economic conditions were “getting better” and 64 percent said “getting worse.”
A late April CNN poll, in which Biden was behind by 6 points, found 30 percent of voters consider the overall economy “very” or “somewhat good,” though a higher amount—47 percent—are “satisfied” with their “own personal financial situation.”
The two data points go hand in hand. If the perception of the economy were better, in all likelihood, Biden’s numbers would be, too.
Notably, a Quinnipiac poll of Wisconsin voters, which had Biden leading a two-way race by 6, found 34 percent believing the economy is “excellent” or “good,” but a healthy 65 percent saying their own “financial situation” is “excellent” or “good”—a even wider divergence than in the national CNN poll.
Last year, I argued Biden was positioned to win re-election so long as GDP, employment, and real (after accounting for inflation) wages, and disposable income were on a positive trajectory, which they have been.
And I observed that public willingness to credit the president for an improving economy tends to a lag behind the data.
Can Biden afford to wait much longer for public perceptions to catch up with the data?
My thoughts coming up, but first, here’s what’s leading the Washington Monthly website:
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Trump’s Plans for Mass Deportation Would Be an Economic Disaster: Contributing Writer Robert J. Shapiro explains how Trump would undermine several industries, wreck the labor market and fuel inflation. Click here for the full story.
Trump Trial, Day 18: Cohen Crushed on Cross: Contributing Editor Jonathan Alter, reporting from the courtroom, chronicles Thursday’s rough day for the star witness. Click here for the full story.
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Biden may not have to do anything extraordinary for public perception to catch up with the data in time for Election Day.
On the other hand, it may not be a good idea to test the proposition.
Getting in the way is a never-ending parade of real and manufactured controversies—most recently handwringing over Biden’s age, the border influx, the Israel-Gaza war, and the Trump hush money trial—crowding out too much media space to leave room for any economic success stories that would change perceptions.
Biden can’t easily fix this problem by himself. Lecturing voters that they should feel better about the economy, and his handling of the economy, than they presently do never works.
Instead of Biden demanding credit from voters, he needs voters who publicly give him credit.
I wrote in February about how a Reaganesque “Morning in America” communications effort could work, which included the following:
The constant gloom-and-doom in our social media-driven discourse is greater now, requiring a more robust optimism operation—not just a few ads near the end of the campaign, but a months-long effort enlisting an army of surrogates.
Ideally, the Biden campaign would tap people from all walks of life—small business owners, PTA presidents, first responders, community bankers, blue-collar workers, stay-at-home parents, community college students, and retirees—from every state or even every county, to echo similar messages in local media about how the economy has turned around.
Voters are more likely to hear positive, factual correctives from local people with whom they are already familiar than from a self-interested politician.
These average Americans could star in TV and digital media advertisements, pen letters to the editor of their local newspapers, and act as surrogates on local news programs, circumventing the 24-7 national cable news narratives.
Biden might not need to do something along these lines to win. But with so much competing news, accelerating the process of improving public perceptions of the economy will be hard without it.
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Bill
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